Broken Chains

When I picture the story of the “most lost man in the Bible,” it doesn’t begin in a graveyard. It begins in a storm.

Jesus and His disciples were crossing the Sea of Galilee when a violent squall exploded over them. Seasoned fishermen—men who had grown up on that water—were sure they were going to die. The wind howled, the waves crashed over the boat, and the sky went black. Somewhere in that chaos, they remembered Jesus was with them… asleep. Curled up on a wet cushion, resting in a peace they could not imagine.

They shook Him awake with a question that still sounds strange: “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” (Mark 4:38). The very One who came so that we should not perish—who loved the world enough to give His life for it (John 3:16)—was being asked if He cared.

Jesus stood up in the middle of the storm, looked straight into the chaos, and spoke three simple words: “Peace, be still” (Mark 4:39). Immediately the wind died, the waves flattened, and the night sky opened. The sea that had just tried to swallow them became like glass. One word from Jesus did that. The same voice that brought the universe into existence brought a raging storm to heel.

Oddly, Scripture says the disciples were more afraid after the calm than during the storm. They whispered, “What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:41). In that hushed awe—boat dripping, clothes soaked, hearts pounding—they were just beginning to realize who was in the boat with them.

And it’s in that quiet after the storm that the next scene rises into view.

As they crossed the last stretch of water in that sudden stillness, the shoreline of the Gadarenes came into focus—a slope of hills dotted with caves, the local cemetery carved into the rock. They guided the boat toward shore, pulled it up on the pebbled beach, and began to step out onto solid ground. After the terror of the night, perhaps they were hoping for a breather.

Instead, the morning was split by a raw, inhuman cry.

Out from the tombs hurtled a man who looked more like a nightmare than a neighbor. He was naked, filthy, scarred from countless self-inflicted wounds. Chains hung from his wrists and ankles where iron had tried and failed to hold him. His hair was matted, his eyes wild, his voice a tangle of rage and agony. He lived among the tombs, Mark says. He wandered the mountains and the graveyard, crying out and cutting himself with stones. No one could pass that way safely. No one could bind him. No one could tame him.

If there was ever a human being beyond help, this was the man.

Yet even in that broken mind and battered body, something still turned in the right direction. The Gospels say that when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and fell before Him (Mark 5:6; Luke 8:28). Whatever was left of his true self sprinted toward the only Hope in sight. Legion voices inside him screamed in protest, but the last little spark of his will reached for the Light.

When he fell at Jesus’ feet, the words that came out of his mouth didn’t sound like a prayer. “What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God most high? I beseech thee, torment me not” (Luke 8:28). Jesus asked, “What is thy name?” and the answer came: “My name is Legion: for we are many” (Mark 5:9). A Roman legion could be thousands of soldiers. That’s how crowded this man’s soul felt.

Scripture doesn’t trace the long road that brought him here, but Jesus gives us a window into how such bondage grows. He spoke of an unclean spirit that leaves a man, finds no rest, and returns to find the heart “empty, swept, and garnished.” It then goes and brings “seven other spirits more wicked than himself,” and “the last state of that man is worse than the first” (Matthew 12:43–45). No one becomes “Legion” in a day. Hearts are not conquered in one blow, but surrendered by degrees. Small choices, repeated often, become strong chains.

As we linger by this man’s story, we start to see ourselves in his shadows. He lived among the tombs—among the dead. The Bible says that without Christ we are “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (1 John 5:12). We can be breathing, working, smiling for pictures, and still be walking through a spiritual graveyard.

He was naked. In Scripture, clothing often represents character. Our own righteousness is “as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6), but God offers a covering. After Adam and Eve sinned and realized their shame, “unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them” (Genesis 3:21). An innocent life was given so the guilty could be covered—a quiet picture of “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). Nakedness in this story speaks of shame and exposure—sin uncovered and unhealed.

He broke chains, and yet he was not free. Iron couldn’t hold him, but sin did. It’s possible to snap every human restraint and still be a slave on the inside. Those broken links clanking at his ankles are a picture of all the things we can walk away from outwardly while the heart still remains bound. The good news is that chains are also something Jesus loves to break. When Peter was delivered from prison, “his chains fell off from his hands” (Acts 12:7). What He did for wrists, He can do for souls.

He cut himself. The devil always moves toward destruction—whether it’s literal self-harm or the slow damage of addiction and compromise. The prophets of Baal “cut themselves… till the blood gushed out” (1 Kings 18:28), trying to get the attention of a god who could not answer. But the Word says our bodies are “the temple of the Holy Ghost” (1 Corinthians 6:19). Heaven values what hell tries to destroy.

He wandered, crying out, tormented day and night. “There is no peace, saith the LORD, unto the wicked” (Isaiah 48:22). The enemy promises excitement and freedom, but leaves people restless, exhausted, and alone. If you peel away the more dramatic details, you’re left with a pattern that feels uncomfortably familiar: dead inside, ashamed, chained to habits, hurting ourselves, restless, isolated. The man of the tombs is simply sin run all the way out to the end of its road.

If you pause the story right here, you can almost see two worlds standing face to face on that shore.

On one side is a man full of devils—a living portrait of what the enemy is trying to do with every life he can get his hands on. On the other side is Jesus, full of the Spirit, “anointed… with the Holy Ghost and with power” (Acts 10:38), showing what a human life looks like completely yielded to the Father. One is rage and ruin. The other is peace and purpose. One is racing toward destruction. The other has just calmed a storm with a word.

That little stretch of beach becomes a picture of the whole great controversy in miniature. Two masters. Two destinies. One trembling, tormented man caught in the middle.

The demons know exactly who they’re facing. In other encounters they cry, “I know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God” (Luke 4:34). Here they beg not to be sent “into the deep” (Luke 8:31)—the abyss, the bottomless pit. A herd of swine is feeding on the hillside, and they plead, “Send us into the swine” (Mark 5:12). Jesus allows it. The devils pour out of the man into the pigs, and the whole herd rushes madly down the steep bank into the sea and drowns.

It’s a shocking scene, but it pulls the curtain back: what the devils did to the pigs in moments is what they had been trying to do to the man all along. The enemy’s real goal is always the same—steal, kill, destroy.

Then comes one of the quietest and most beautiful lines in the story. When the townspeople hurry out to see what has happened, they find the man who had the legion “sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind” (Mark 5:15).

A short time earlier, he had been roaming among the tombs; now he’s sitting at Jesus’ feet. He had been naked; now he’s clothed. He had been raving; now he’s in his right mind. Somewhere between that wild dash from the caves and this moment by the water, Jesus broke invisible chains, quieted a tormented mind, covered shame, and began teaching a new way to live.

Scripture doesn’t say exactly where the clothes came from, but however it happened, the point stands: the same Jesus who drives out demons also restores dignity. He does not just empty a life of darkness; He fills it with light.

You might expect the people to fall at Jesus’ feet in gratitude. Instead, they’re afraid. Their pigs are gone, their economy is shaken, their worldview has been interrupted. Faced with the uncomfortable power and purity of Christ, they ask Him to leave. And He does. If we insist on His departure, even sorrowfully, He will not force Himself on us.

The man who’s been freed reacts very differently. He begs to go with Jesus, to stay physically close to the One who rescued him. But Jesus has another plan. “Go home to thy friends,” He says, “and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee” (Mark 5:19). The man obeys, and when Jesus later returns to that region, the crowds are ready and waiting. One healed life has become a lighthouse for many others.

By now the story has moved a long way from a storm on the sea, but the thread is the same: Jesus steps into places that feel out of control—waves overhead, chains on ankles, thoughts we can’t tame—and He brings a peace and a freedom we cannot manufacture.

It’s easy to hear about the demoniac and think, “That’s not me.” Yet if we listen a little closer, pieces of his story echo in quieter ways. There are tombs that look like old regrets we keep visiting. There are chains that look like habits we keep excusing. There is nakedness that feels like a nagging sense of unworthiness, a fear that if we were really known, we would surely be rejected. There are cuts that don’t bleed on the outside—words we tell ourselves, choices we regret, comforts that leave us emptier than before.

This story answers a few questions that often live in that quiet place we don’t talk about much.

How lost is too lost? If Legion wasn’t beyond reach, neither is anyone who can still turn their face, even slightly, toward Christ. The most hopeless man in the Gospels ran to Jesus—and Jesus didn’t recoil. He stayed. He spoke. He delivered.

Do we have to clean ourselves up first? The man of the tombs didn’t. He came exactly as he was—chains clanking, hair wild, mind fractured, heart in pieces. He didn’t stand at a distance promising to do better “someday.” He fell at Jesus’ feet, and Jesus did the cleansing, the calming, the clothing, and the commissioning.

What does Jesus actually do for a soul? He doesn’t just rearrange the furniture. He gives life where there was death, peace where there was torment, purity where there was shame, purpose where there was aimlessness. He takes someone who was a terror to others and a torment to himself and turns him into a witness of compassion and power.

Scripture is plain that there are only two real directions. Jesus spoke of the broad way that leads to destruction and the narrow way that leads to life (Matthew 7:13–14). He said, “He that is not with me is against me” (Matthew 12:30). Paul writes, “To whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey” (Romans 6:16). None of us stands as neutral as we like to think. We are either moving toward the One who calms storms and breaks chains, or drifting toward the caves.

The hope in this story is that one honest turn toward Jesus outweighs a lifetime of running away.

If you feel chains in your own life—visible or invisible—this is a gentle place to begin: bring them, as they are, to the shore where Christ stands. You don’t have to untie every knot. You don’t have to make yourself presentable first. You can simply say, “Jesus, Thou Son of God most high, have mercy on me. Break what I can’t break. Cover what I can’t fix. Speak ‘Peace, be still’ to my storm.”

He has already promised, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37). And again, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” (Hebrews 13:5). If faith feels small, you can borrow the prayer of another desperate heart: “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” (Mark 9:24). He hears that too.

Somewhere on the other side of that simple surrender is a picture you may not have seen of yourself yet: sitting at Jesus’ feet, clothed and in your right mind, learning what it means to walk free—and quietly being sent to tell “how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee” (Mark 5:19).

Broken chains make a sound in heaven. Sometimes it’s the roar of praise. Sometimes it’s just the soft testimony of a life changed, passed from friend to friend. Either way, they are proof that the same Jesus who calmed a storm and freed a man among the tombs is still speaking peace, still breaking chains, and still writing new stories—one heart at a time.

If this Fireside Chat warmed your spirit and sparked fresh resolve to live what you believe, fan that flame with Scripture—“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Colossians 3:16). Pull a little closer to the Light, and carry it into the week ahead.

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